


Time is an illusion. Half-time doubly so.

by saltstreets



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-17 22:37:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9349340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltstreets/pseuds/saltstreets
Summary: “Let’s go to space.” Alexi sounded decided. He waggled his eyebrows at Michael. “Want to see my spaceship?”Michael fixed him with a withering stare. “I am in disbelief, and that is not even the worst pick-up line I have ever heard you use. Go bother someone else.”“No, really,” Alexi said earnestly, refusing to wither. “A real spaceship.” He winked. “Have I ever mentioned to you that I’m from a different planet?”





	

**Author's Note:**

> An AU borne entirely out of the concept that Alexi is basically the Zaphod Beeblebrox to Micha's Trillian. It spiralled from there.
> 
> If you've never read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...well _what_ are you doing with your life, put this fic _down_ and go read it! But barring that, you'll not miss much with this story asides from some references and a plot point that doesn't really go much of anywhere.  
>   
> 
> The title is, of course, a quote from Ford adjusted to fit my needs.

 

 

Under extreme duress, Michael Ballack might have been persuaded to say that he had warmed to Alexi Lalas. It was certainly a piece of information that could be tortured out of him, although really it didn’t need to be; that it was an honest fact could be seen quite easily enough. The following evidence will testify: Alexi’s voice no longer acted upon his nerves in a fashion similar to a lump of steel wool. Michael had permitted the _status quo_ of personal airspace between them to drop a good half-metre from his own standard distance. He had gotten a Twitter account, for God’s sake.

Certainly four years of association –rather, four years of active knowledge of each others’ existences peppered with cyclical periods of several weeks’ almost painfully close interaction, smoke-hazed with the excitement and near-panic of a tournament- had worked _some_ sort of effect on Michael. It was only slightly galling that the same association hadn’t had much impact in the opposite direction: Alexi appeared utterly unreformed by Michael’s undoubtedly good influence. Had Michael been a petty man it would have irked him that for all intents and purposes he had simply gotten used to Alexi with no compromise.

Michael was not a petty man. He would insist upon this point with such a stare that any would-be accusers hastily retracted their statements. Not petty. At all.

Nevertheless it was gratifying when Alexi contacted him first during the summer that they were no longer working together, and continued to do so after his own competition coverage had ended. Michael had discovered himself missing Alexi to a surprising during the Euros another admission that would have required a truncheon and pliers to extract. The odds of them actually becoming friends had initially seemed so staggeringly high but here he was, glancing over at the co-analysts chair and expecting to see a familiar gingery grin.

The international season ended and Michael went back to Germany (a country where the national opinion of _doesn’t matter, we’re still world champions_ was so strong and so uniformly held that had humanity possessed the proper technology to harness the power of collective thinking, this single smug consolation would have managed to solve the energy crisis practically by itself. Unfortunately no such technology yet existed on Earth, and the planet continued gobbling fossil fuels despite the efforts of everyone who had gone home and stuck on 2014 highlight reels while nursing pints both literally and figuratively bitter).

Things went on as they tended to do until Michael took a brief vacation to New York City and, in a fit of insanity, sent a message to Alexi informing him of the fact.

It took roughly fifteen seconds after the message had been delivered for Michael to regret it. It took roughly seventy five seconds after _that_ for Alexi to respond telling Michael to come visit him.

 

Michael Ballack  
_I’m in New York. You are in California._

 

Michael didn’t have much hope that this irrefutable logic, even combined with the geographic idiocy of the too-large United States, would do much to dissuade Alexi from this particular path. But he tried anyway.

 

Alexis Lalas  
_Dude dont even pretend youre doing anything more important!!! Get on the plane_

Alexi Lalas  
_Twellman is here well throw u a killer party dont be a wuss_

Alexi Lalas  
_Jetblue has a flight leaving from jfk in two hours I just looked! If you run you can probs make it!_

 

Michael thought about typing up a counter-argument, as well as a line of inquiry into how not wanting to take a five hour flight across North America in the middle of what was supposed to be a relaxing week made him a _wuss_ , but in the end he just sighed, threw his phone down on the bed, and opened up his suitcase to repack.

 

\--

 

In the end, the flight wasn’t terrible and the promised party was actually a fairly entertaining affair, not least because Taylor decided halfway through that he was going to start karaoke, and Michael was apparently at a stage in his life where Taylor Twellman belting out off-key eighties anthems was hilarious rather than soul-withering.

Midnight found him sitting on the balcony of Alexi’s fashionable LA apartment, smoking a slightly guilty cigarette while the sounds of _Take On Me_ thrummed mutedly through the sliding glass door. September in Los Angeles was still, to Michael’s mind, ludicrously blazing hot, but the night had brought with it a chill edge that foretold of cold to come.

He was just tapping the last ashes off against the balcony railing when the door slid open and Alexi spilled out, trailing the suddenly all-too-clear notes of Taylor’s music interpretations. Michael winced.

Alexi grinned apologetically and closed the door, returning them once again to the relative quiet. “Yeah, it got too much even for me.” His gaze dropped to Michael’s hand and clucked his tongue in delighted reprimand. “Smoking, are we? Naughty.”

“No,” said Michael, guiltily dropping the cigarette end and grinding it out under his heel.

“Mhm,” Alexi said indulgently, stepping forward to lean against the railing. He shivered theatrically. “It’s _cold_ out here.”

Michael scoffed. “Cold? This is warm. For September especially, this is warm.”

“Hey, we’re in LA and this is _cold._ Not all of us live in frozen hellscapes like you.”

“Germany is a continental climate similar to your north-eastern United States,” Michael told him.

“Yeah, like I said. Frozen hellscapes.”

Michael opted for simply rolling his eyes. “It is nice out,” he said, more for something _to_ say than any other reason. He was drunk enough that holding a real, meaningful conversation was a bit beyond his grasp at the moment. “But too bad there is so much light here. Stars would be good.”

“We could see them up close,” Alexi said dreamily. “Like, from space. You want to go to space?”

Michael made a non-committal noise, more focused on whether or not smoking another cigarette would be worth Alexi making fun of him.

“Let’s go to space.” Alexi sounded decided. He waggled his eyebrows at Michael. “Want to see my spaceship?”

Michael fixed him with a withering stare. “I am in disbelief, and that is not even the worst pick-up line I have ever heard you use. Go bother someone else.”

“No, really,” Alexi said earnestly, refusing to wither. “A real spaceship.” He winked. “Have I ever mentioned to you that I’m from a different planet?”

As a matter of fact he had mentioned it, on several occasions. At this point Michael just took Alexi’s frequent declarations of otherworldliness in stride.

(Back in 2012 they had gotten into a fight, a real fight and not just a disagreement, over something probably stupid that Alexi had done that Michael couldn’t recall anymore. But he had been genuinely angry, really furiously angry, and Alexi had thrown his hands up with a shrug and protested, “Sorry, man, Earth customs are _weird_ to me sometimes, y’know?” Michael had had to clench his hands into fists to prevent himself from throwing something at Alexi, preferably something heavy. As it was he’d just stormed out and not spoken to Alexi for a week outside of their required professional interaction. But since then Michael had gotten used to Alexi repeatedly insisting that he wasn’t from planet Earth. He had eventually just chalked it up to that all-encompassing rationale for strange behaviour: _who can understand Americans, anyway?_ )

“I wanna show you the dark side of the moon, baby,” Alexi was saying with enthusiasm. Michael began to roll his eyes and make a dismissive noise when the beer he’d drunk caught up with his derision, derailing it.

“Alright,” he found himself saying, “when do we leave?”

Alexi looked startled for a split-second, and then his face broke into a beaming smile. “Oh _yes,_ Michael, my guy, I promise this is gonna be _amazing._ ”

“It had better be,” said Michael, trying to sound severe but missing the mark and landing somewhere in the territory of ‘giggly’. “You have me fly from New York City for this. I could be enjoying a Broadway play instead.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Alexi dismissed the claim. “You would hate musical theatre, I know you. Don’t even pretend like you wouldn’t.”

He had a point. Michael had never listened to a musical soundtrack in his life, operating off of the assumption that he would indeed hate it.

He decided to be concerned about Alexi’s insight into his character later, when he wasn’t feeling so pleasantly tipsy and when the promise of spaceships and stars wasn’t in the balance.

 

\--

 

Commentators and analysts were often accused of speaking in nothing but clichés and redundancies, something which Michael tended to try and do his best to avoid. He did in fact enjoy his job, and took pride in being able to do it well. He always tried to contribute something genuine to a discussion, skipping the statements like _that Messi’s quite good, isn’t he_. Michael didn’t like speaking in clichés or redundancies. Some things went without saying.

Unfortunately, the human brain upon being faced for the first time with the reality of seeing their planet from the outside, so to speak, tended to lose some measure of eloquence. Even the best and brightest human brains suffered from the difficulty of trying to grasp the simple fact of _being in space_. Many basic assumptions were stripped away, such as the constancy of the planet’s gravity, to be replaced by the sight of just how massively insignificant life on Earth really was, whizzing pointlessly around an unremarkable yellow sun in the unspeakable vastness of the universe, with only the moon for company. And, not entirely unlike witnessing Lionel Messi dance through six defenders with a football humming at his feet before floating said football past a hapless keeper into the top corner of the net, _being in space_ tended to reduce the human brain to clichés and redundancies.

Michael’s brain, though a good one, was indeed human. He looked out onto the planet – _the Earth_ , his brain supplied helpfully, dissolving quickly to Jamie Redknapp levels at the sight, _that is literally the Earth_ \- and found himself at a loss.

“That,” said Michael, faintly, “that _is_ remarkable.”

In all fairness, it was rather nice to look at. Even a dull little blue green planet could seem quite beautiful, quite important and impressive, when looked at from a good angle. And Alexi knew nothing if not how to find a good angle.

 

\--

 

Alexi’s ship was small and a surprisingly boring grey colour, and had also been parked round the back of his building, squeezed in between a Honda Civic and a Prius, both of which looked a decent ways more space-worthy than the strangely unaerodynamic cube with the clear dome that, until Alexi had proudly pointed it out, Michael could have sworn looked more or less like a junky Smart car. He had blinked, and there it had stood: plain but unmistakably curious.

“Low-level cloaking,” Alexi had explained as he’d pressed a hand to the side of the cube, activating some sort of mechanism which rolled one side down like a window blind, revealing the interior. “It just looks like any old boring car unless you know what you’re looking for. Cool, right?”

Michael had agreed that yes, it was cool. And it was. And of course, it had only gotten cooler –more cool? Michael was uncertain about the grammar on that particular adjective- with the actual ascent through the atmosphere, culminating in the ‘remarkable’ incident, after which Michael retreated into silence. There were a lot of things he wanted to say, but he had managed to cling to some sense of dignity and was unwilling to babble.

Alexi on the other hand had never been one _not_ to babble when babbling was a possibility. “I know, it’s a lot to take in,” he was saying breezily at the moment, clearing enjoying Michael’s speechlessness and determined to make the most of it. “I’m not _totally_ stupid. I know you always thought I was whack or joking when I said I was an alien. It helps your cover when people don’t take you seriously. But really! Here we are, in _space,_ my guy.” He tapped the clear dome above them. “How’re you handling it?”

Surprisingly well, Michael thought, fairly impressed by his own lack of panic. After the initial shock of seeing the Earth down below him he was recovering quite well. Although he supposed it might be down to his brain deciding that acceptance was a safer course of action, and was simply delaying the complete and utter breakdown for a later time. It also might help that Alexi was already so strange, that his actually being an alien wasn’t the leap that it might have been.

They floated in the proverbial tin can, orbiting the planet and passing the occasional satellite. Michael raised the issue of being pinged by any one of the hundreds of thousands of sensors on Earth that had been set up for the explicit purpose of tracking objects in space, but Alexi seemed to find the idea of being picked up by “Earthling tech” unspeakably hilarious, so Michael let the worry slide, and instead began interrogating Alexi on a more personal level.

“I found out about Earth like, in the eighties?” Alexi told him, shrugging. “Or whatever. I crashed here while on vacation with my first band, and was like hey, this place is kinda neat, and then I found out about soccer and _that_ was fucking awesome, obviously. Great job.”

“Why football?” Michael interrupted. “You are crashed here, you decide you like the planet. But why a footballer? You could have picked anything to do.”

“Because it’s the best sport in the galaxy,” Alexi said promptly. “I know. I’ve tried most of them.”

Michael nodded solemnly. “I have always known this. But of course it is nice to have confirmation.”

“Also it really helped my campaign,” Alexi continued, “because I had like, this double-life, y’know? Like, one solar cycle I’m an _artiste_ trying to hack a living off of his raw musical talent in an unforgiving galaxy with no time for sensitive souls; the next I’m living rough on a pre-hyperspace planet, dealing with savage customs and putting a small round object into the back of a net to earn my bread! The people were like, whoa, this frood is so far out he’s _here,_ he’s so way off he’s right on. And they all lined up to vote.” Alexi preened. “They even made a reality show based on the difficulties I faced. Great ratings among late-night galactic broadcasts.”

There were several unanswered questions, mostly revolving around Alexi’s career as a space musician and why the denizens of the non-Earth universe seemed to speak as if they were from the seventies. But mostly-

“What do you mean, vote? What campaign are you talking about?”

Alexi had been absently twiddling a few dials on the control panel which apparently operated some kind of radio, as he had tuned to a station playing strange bubbling sounds emitted at random intervals, but now he stopped and slowly turned to look at Michael. “Hang on,” he said, “did I not...?” His eyes widened. “Holy shit. Dude, I don’t even think I mentioned. Whoa. I mean, I kinda forget, that people on Earth don’t like, _know,_ you know?”

“Know what?” Michael prompted, irritably. “What have you not mentioned?”

“Mentioned that I’m the President, Michael! I’m the President of the Galaxy!”

It was with this statement that Michael’s suspension of disbelief, which was at that point as taut as a guitar string with the effort of holding his mind up from spiralling off into gibbering madness, snapped, and as a consequence he started laughing. This was no good. Michael didn’t laugh at Alexi unless he was either incredibly drunk or Germany had just won something major. Since he was a decent ways along in the sobering process by this point and the next international break wasn’t for a few weeks, the only other option was imminent insanity. The papers were saying that it was a bad year for politics, but this was beyond the pale.

“Alexi,” Michael managed to say, in between cackles, “I try to support my colleagues, but this-” he stopped to catch his breath “-is the most idiotic thing I have ever heard you say. And you say all the time idiotic things on television.”

Alexi patiently waited before defending himself, letting him laugh until the final snicker had drifted off. It was actually considerate of him, a fact which Michael’s subconscious quietly noted before going off to have a lie down.

“I’m a charismatic figure, Michael! I have the interests of every galactic citizen at heart.” He tapped his chest self-importantly, but he was grinning. “Do you want to see my official ID card?”

“No, no, I think what I am most sceptical about,” Michael said, sufficiently collected to speak again, “is why you, if you _are_ President of the Galaxy-”

“Am buzzing about in this piece of crap ship even though I’m obviously famous and disgustingly rich?” Alexi interrupted. “I know, it’s a dump. But it’s not by choice, when I-”

“No,” Michael seized the conversation back, frowning at having been cut off, “not the ship. What I want to know is why from every league on the planet, the President of the Galaxy decided to play in the MLS.”

Alexi gaped at him. Michael blinked lazily, smugly, the upper hand decidedly back within his possession. “Really, Alexi, here you are scraping the bottom of the bucket.”

“The phrase is the bottom of the _barrel_ and the MLS is totally _not_ it!” Alexi said indignantly. “The MLS is a great and noble league with mountains of talent and potential, and it’s Euro snobs like you who are keeping it from being the best it can be!”

Michael sighed. Of course out of all the aliens in the universe, he had to get stuck with the one who was _American._ He was feeling more level-headed again, returning from the unfathomable back into the normal, which was based primarily upon the reliable fact that Alexi was an idiot. He could count on that, at least, not having changed. “Alright,” he said, opting for a different tack, “then why _are_ you in this, ‘piece of crap’ ship?” He said it mostly to indulge Alexi and his frankly beyond belief claim of galactic political importance, but he could see what Alexi had been talking about. Michael might not have known the first thing about spaceships but he could certainly tell low-grade production when he saw it. Apparently some things were universal: the plastic siding on the armrests made up to look like leather, the too-narrow seats: it all screamed _cheap car._ Albeit a cheap car that was currently orbiting the Earth at a distance of thirty thousand kilometres. But the principle of the thing was the same.

“This isn’t _my_ ship,” Alexi said, “Seriously. I mean, well hey, I’m not a snob, and people fly around in all sorts of things because of money reasons or for retro cred or whatever but I mean, this isn’t my style.”

“I know,” Michael assured him, dryly. “Your style is much, much worse.”

“I’d be offended but I know your idea of daring decor is putting vertical stripes on the curtains and horizontal stripes on the sofa in the same room, so.”

“I would _never_ have horizontal stripes on a sofa,” Michael muttered, hurt by the very idea. Alexi ignored him.

“I’m only in this out of dire necessity. Over the summer I had to rush back for the Copa coverage and kinda trashed my ship on re-entry. Totalled it. And since this planet’s such a backwater you guys never have anything good lying around! The only thing I could find was this little hopper, which is about a billion series out of date, not to mention ugly. I gotta find myself a new ride before anyone gets pics of me in this thing, I swear.” He shook his head. “I’m always crashing on Earth. Humans have real bad facilities for interstellar travel, and that includes post-interstellar landings.”

Michael felt a vague compulsion to defend his species but he couldn’t really refute the point. It wasn’t his fault humanity was less scientifically advanced than fitted Alexi’s needs.

“So what does the President of the Galaxy actually do?” he asked instead.

Alexi shrugged. “Oh, you know. Stuff,” he said, vaguely. “I preside, on occasion. I represent, too.”

“Hm.” Michael thought about it, weighing the list of far-fetched things that he had already come to accept in the past few hours and seeing if he could add another without permanently breaking his mind. “Alright.”

“You don’t seem too impressed by the title,” said Alexi, sounding let down. “I’m the _president,_ Michael. Of the _Imperial Galactic Government._ ”

“I am from Germany,” Michael pointed out. “Our president does not do much, either. If you said you were galactic Bundeskanzler, then I worry.” He glanced down at his wristwatch while Alexi spluttered. He wasn’t entirely certain how time worked in space –he suddenly wished that he had been more into science fiction, because it would have probably helped him at this juncture- but according to the watch he personally had left the Earth two hours ago. “When are you planning to return? Taylor at the least will notice we have vanished and will maybe call the police.”

“Good old Taylor,” Alexi said fondly. “Even if no one else would care, he would.”

“Wicked cool,” said Michael in tribute, carefully mimicking the accent. Alexi put a hand over his heart and saluted.

They had drifted to some point over the Middle East and Alexi began taking them back around towards North America so they could begin the descent. Even Michael’s rudimentary knowledge of how vessels usually operated in space was pinging him that something was wrong with Alexi being able to simply spin them around just like that, but he figured they were well out of the realm of anything that would make sense to even NASA’s top experts, and he kept quiet. Things like planetary gravity and inertia maybe just didn’t apply to Alexi. Presidential privilege or some such nonsense.

Instead of bothering himself with whichever laws of physics that were currently being broken, he looked out the window. The dome above them let in the tiny pinpricks of starlight, a personal planetarium. The radio station that Alexi had turned on earlier had changed to the more agreeable sound of something like wind chimes played over a low humming.

“Very beautiful,” said Michael, absently gazing up. “They are perfect, you know? And still very far away, even from here.”

“Yeah, I know.” There was something odd in Alexi’s tone that made Michael look over at him. Alexi was watching Michael with an oddly intent, almost pensive expression.

“What?” Michael asked, taken aback and slightly alarmed by the look in Alexi’s eye. “What is it? Is there something on my face?”

Alexi continued fixing him with that strange gaze for another second before sighing with exaggerated impatience and rolling his eyes. “For someone who is actually from Earth, you have a really terrible grasp on human emotion. You know that, right?”

Michael scowled, offended. “I have an excellent grasp on human emotion. For an example, you are right now being _annoying._ I am _annoyed._ ”

“I mean other peoples’ emotions,” Alexi said.

“You are impossible,” Michael told him, and Alexi just sighed as if _Michael_ was being in some way dense.

Michael huffed under his breath and went back to appreciating the vastness of the galaxy, which was most certainly easier to comprehend than Alexi and whatever it was he was going on about. Even without all the alien-ness the man –or the _being,_ Michael was uncertain- was confounding. He shouldn’t be surprised: it wasn’t exactly any kind of revelation that Alexi Lalas could play on Michael’s nerves like a talented harpist.

 

\--

 

The descent back down to Earth was a bit rocky, which Alexi claimed had more to do with the puniness of the ship than his own failings as a pilot. Michael kept quiet on the issue, since he didn’t have much of a leg to stand on when it came to flying a spaceship. Usually ‘not having a leg to stand on’ wouldn’t have been too much of a problem when it came to criticising Alexi, but Michael was feeling generous despite the brief squabble earlier. He had, after all, just been personally ferried out into the great beyond for no reason other than Alexi had wanted to show it to him.

They parked the ship in its former spot squeezed between the cars and went back upstairs to Alexi’s, where the party had cleared out except for Taylor, who was wrapped up in a blanket on the couch, watching Legally Blonde on TV without a trace of irony. He waggled his eyebrows at them when they came through the door. “Hiii. And where have you crazy kids been?”

“Space,” Michael drawled.

“Oh, is that what they’re calling it these days,” said Taylor with a suggestive smirk that would have more irritating if he hadn’t borne such an uncanny resemblance to a burrito made of fleece.

It all felt so terribly normal for an evening in which a decent percentage of Michael’s reality had been flipped on its head. And when Alexi winked at him as he passed to go grab a few more beers from the kitchen before settling down on the couch with Taylor, Michael thought that he could live with that flip quite well enough.

 

\--

 

Life went on more or less as normal. Michael flew back to Germany, put in a few appearances here and there, and started using Twitter a lot more. Alexi sent him the occasional photo of whatever activity he was getting up to at the time: hiking, cycling, wandering about various playing fields...but all decidedly earthly occurrences. Had Michael not placed so much confidence in his own mental powers, he almost could have entering into the suspicion that Alexi taking him to space had more logically been the product of Alexi slipping him some sort of experimental drug, the kind that the tabloids liked to get hysterical about when they were taking a day off from being hysterical about foreigners, or the rising price of a bread roll.

Until some months later, when Alexi showed up on Michael’s doorstep, with a beaming, self-satisfied smile and a truly awful outfit comprising of not just two but four different varieties of denim. Michael nearly closed the door in his face for that aberration against basic decency alone, but Alexi looked to pleased with himself that he let the crime slide.

“Remember I said I needed to get a new ship?”

It was in the car park of Michael’s local shopping centre, so huge and impressive that he was shocked Alexi could get away with placing it so blatantly in public. A towering, slick vessel with a shiny silver frame, that appeared to be made entirely of glass.

“It’s made entirely of glass,” said Alexi, smugly. “Top of the line, baby. The new presidential cruiser.”

“I will admit, Alexi,” Michael told him, “I am impressed. This is a surprisingly tasteful ship.”

“This cruiser is gorgeous, lemme tell you. Brand new, with built in anti-friction columns for the hyperspace drive. Usually you have to buy those separate, you know? Because of the whole exploding controversy- oh, wait, you wouldn’t know.”

Michael looked at him sceptically. “’Exploding controversy’?”

Alexi shrugged. “Hey man, sometimes products get recalled, yeah?”

“ _’Exploding controversy’??”_

“It was a couple generations back! It was a glitch! Fixed now!” He gave Michael his best wide-eyed innocent look. “Would I be taking you to space in a ship that I thought was maybe going to explode?”

“Yes,” said Michael. “You would.”

“That is _such_ a slander on my character,” Alexi protested. “ _Dude.”_

“Do not ‘dude’ me,” Michael told him, primly. “I will go in the cruiser, but if we die it is because _you_ are too much in love with advanced technology for your own good, and I want everyone in the galaxy to know that.”

“Oh, they already do,” said Alexi cheerfully. “They already do.”

**\--**

“Speaking of advanced technology,” Alexi said once they had broken atmosphere, “how do you like the sound of trying out something _totally_ new?”

“Alright,” said Michael cautiously, not wanting to wander into either a ridiculous plan or one of Alexi’s bad innuendos, “what?”

“If you think this ship is speedy, then just wait.” Alexi pulled back on the throttle with enthusiasm. “They’ve developed this- I don’t even know how to explain, but it’s like, this drive, that, it- y’know what? Let’s just say it’s super high-tech and super cool and mind-blowing. Top-secret project, and the ship is being unveiled soon. I’m obviously going to do the honours, want to come along and we can take it for a spin?”

Michael thought about it. It seemed alright. “Okay. Where is it?”

Alexi blinked at him. “No protest? Dude, if I’d known it was so easy to get you to agree to steal things I’d have done this ages ago!”

Michael did a double-take. “Wait, _steal things_?! I thought it was your ship!”

“No! But it should be! That’s the point! What did you think I was saying?”

“I thought it is maybe a presidential right or something, that you get to use the special ship! I didn’t realise you were saying you want to _steal_ it!” Michael crossed his arms. “We are not stealing a ship.”

Alexi made what he probably thought were puppy-dog eyes at him.

“No. I am not going to break the law on only my second trip into space.”

“You don’t know anything about galactic law,” Alexi wheedled. “It could be that stealing isn’t even a crime, how would you know? I never said it was a crime.”

Michael didn’t even dignify that with a response. He just frowned at Alexi.

What followed was a brief silent stand-off between two sets of eyebrows: Michael’s stern and Alexi’s pleading.

“ _Fine_ ,” Michael finally grouched, when the tragic furrowing of Alexi’s forehead had reached an almost impossibly piteous level, “we will steal the ship. If only so that you will stop pestering me.”

Alexi’s face broke out into an even wider grin than usual. “Yess! You are the _man,_ Michael. And hey, it’ll be absolutely worth it. This ship is awesome, just wait and see.”

“You do remember I know nothing about space travel,” Michael reminded him. “To me, everything is ‘awesome’. This is awesome, as well.”

“You think?” Alexi looked at him, pleased.

“Obviously.” Michael gestured to the stars, visible all around them. “You complain about things being not up to standard. But to me, the stars, the Earth, it is all very fantastic.”

Alexi beamed. Michael’s traitorous heart warmed considerably.

 

\--

 

 “I do enjoy this,” Michael said tentatively a few hours later, as they blasted through hyperspace towards the unveiling ceremony, travelling at what Alexi assured him was ‘a totally whacked out top-speed, for real’.

“What, thievery?”

“No, Alexi.” Michael rolled his eyes. “Flying into outer space. It is exciting, you know?”

Alexi grinned and punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Even though you have to put up with me doing the flying?”

“You’re not so bad,” Michael said, graciously. It was true. He quite liked Alexi, if he was being fully honest. Which he wasn’t usually, but he could admit it to himself. Alexi could be exciting.

Alexi could also, apparently, rope him into harebrained schemes. Harebrained schemes in space. That was certainly a new and unsettling development in their relationship. Michael was fairly sure that in 2012 he would have been more than capable of telling Alexi to fuck off before he forcibly turned the ship around. But here, a mere four years later, and he was regarding Alexi’s desire for grand theft, spaceship with something akin to amused indulgence.

“I still find you entirely impossible,” Michael added, hastily, because it wouldn’t do for Alexi to think he could start getting away with even more than he already did, “you are outrageous. And quite possibly unhinged. But you’re not _so_ bad.”

“Aww, Michael. I’m blushing over here.”

“Indeed.” Michael tried to keep his voice as dry as possible, but when he settled back into his seat it was a difficult task to keep the grin from spreading across his face.

As they zipped along Alexi tried to explain the exact mechanic of the technology they were about to steal, and by the time they landed Michael was sick of technical phrases and ready to just see the thing in action.

“Damogran,” said Alexi with a dismissive wave of his hand as they stepped out of the cruiser. “It’s basically a fly-over planet, which is why they chose it.” He winked, and steered Michael in the direction of a small compound on the shore of the island where they had landed. “All very top secret.” There was a speed boat-type of vessel waiting for them at the compound, for which Alexi produced a set of keys.

“Hmm.” Michael inspected their surroundings as Alexi fiddled with the tether on the speed boat, which looked suspiciously like the same kind of cable lock Michael used for his bicycle back home. “I think it looks very pretty. Germans would come here for vacation, if we were going in space. Put in some curry stands and have some beach chairs. Perfect.”

Alexi snickered. “I’m not even surprised.”

The journey from the island where they had landed the cruiser to the island where the welcome party was waiting for Alexi to cut the ribbon on the new ship was a pleasant one, gliding over the shining Damogran sea and weaving in between the small archipelagos that dotted the planet’s surface. Michael quite enjoyed himself. It really could have been a vacation on Earth, somewhere in the Mediterranean, perhaps, until they rounded the coast of a particularly large island, and there it was.

“The Heart of Gold,” said Alexi in an impressive tone. “The most powerful ship in the galaxy.”

It didn’t matter than Michael was an unlearned Earthling, who had never even seen an episode of Star Trek. Even he could see that the Heart of Gold was a stunner. Michael wasn’t the kind of man who was unduly impressed by nice cars, but he let a low whistle when he saw the Heart of Gold. “Oohh.”

“My thoughts exactly,” said Alexi, sounding like Christmas had come early.

Alexi’s presidential cruiser had put the small grey space craft from a few months ago to shame, but the Heart of Gold made the cruiser look like a tricycle with a duct-taped handle bar. The Heart of Gold looked as though it was CGI, such was its flawless perfection, the smooth curves of the hull carving seamlessly through the background of Damogran’s sandy hills.

Michael had a thought, just then. “Do you even have a plan how you’re going to carry this off?”

“Michael,” said Alexi, wounded, “have some faith.”

 

\--

 

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” said Michael in exasperation once Alexi had administered the proper muscle relaxant via hypodermic syringe which allowed him to move again. He was lying rather inelegantly on the smooth white floor of the bridge of the Heart of Gold, having just experienced the indignity of Alexi carrying him onto the ship while he was frozen. “What was that, some kind of, of freezing grenade? You could not have told me that this was what you wanted to do?”

“Hey, gimme a break,” said Alexi, not sounding terribly put out by Michael’s irritation. “If I told you what I was gonna do you might have tensed up before I threw the Paralyso-Matic, and you’d be having really shit muscle cramps right now. Trust me, it was better for you to be totally unaware.”

Michael scowled and rubbed at his calf, looking around. “Is this it? Your plan worked?” There was a low humming from the ship and the wide, sleek monitor over the console showed stars stretching out before them.

“Don’t sound so surprised.” Alexi gave him an apologetic smile. “Really, I am sorry I didn’t tell you.”

Forgiveness came to the tip of Michael’s tongue with annoying ease. “Just do not go doing it every day.” He thought about the days when he would have given Alexi a death glare simply for breathing too loudly in his direction, or stealing his pen. Now here he was, really only superficially furious after having been physically frozen by Alexi in order to steal a spaceship. How the times changed.

And besides, spaceship. It was a game of trade-offs. It always had been.

“This ship had better be _super cool_ ,” he said, mimicking Alexi’s earlier phrasing and stretching out a hand to let Alexi help haul him to his feet. “Since I am being paralysed for it.”

“Worth it, I promise.” Alexi dragged him over to the console. “Just look at this thing!”

As with the outer appearance of the ship, the inside of the Heart of Gold was impressive even to the layman’s eye. The smooth curve of the console, the shiny screens, the towering array of lights blinking softly.

“The stats guys would be flipping their shit to get their hands on this,” Alexi said gleefully, running his hands gently over the complicated set of panels lining the dashboard. “I can practically hear Opta Joe crying out for it. Not to mention the entire betting industry!” He peeled off the protective plastic film covering one of the screens. “Look, they’ve put in a specialised keypad _just_ for entering probabilities. Fuck, this is cool.”

“Is this it?” Michael asked, pointing to a large red button in the centre of the control panel, covered by a plastic dome. “Is this the-”

Alexi’s eyes gleamed. “ _Oh_ yeah.” He flicked up the dome. “This is it.”

They both stared at the Infinite Improbability Drive in silence, contemplating. It was impressive, it was revolutionary, it was borderline untested and most assuredly beyond any technology that either of them had ever used before. Alexi was out of his depth, to say nothing of Michael, who was wearing a digital watch, for God’s sake.

“We should definitely read the user manual before punching this thing,” Alexi said, in an almost reverent tone, looking at the red button. “Anything could happen.”

 “You’re right,” said Michael slowly, in whose mind a small voice was whispering, one that he hadn’t heard for many a year since his playing days when sometimes there would be a lithe, irritating winger strolling down the flank with a smirk on his face and Michael would be attacked by the temptation to just put in a two-footer, just because he _could._ “Read the user manual. That would be very...responsible.”

They both glanced over at the complicated shipboard computer array, which could probably be poked at and coaxed into giving them instructions on how best to use the Improbability Drive without accidentally turning themselves inside out.

“Or...”

“We could just...hit it?” Alexi completed, hopefully.

Michael looked at him. Then back to the button. Then back at Alexi. “Yeah. Hit it.”

Alexi didn’t need to be told twice.

 

\--

 

When the air had cleared of confetti and the last salmon had wriggled its way off of the smooth white floor and back into the river running through the bridge, the first thing that Michael noticed was that the dashboard and control panel had turned into a large, well-equipped kitchen counter, with the kind of fancy electric stove that just had black glass on top and no visible burners and a stainless steel sink with a tall flexible faucet. There was an electric kettle on the polished marble counter that was whistling and an alarmingly large set of knives in a wooden block in the corner.

“Alexi?” he tried to ask, but he seemed to have forgotten how to speak and what came out was “Ixela?”

“Leahcim,” came the reply, and Alexi folded himself out of the form of a small wooden chair that had been propped previously unnoticed against the wall. “Yeh, ecin nehctik.”

“Ti si ton enim,” Michael told him. “M’i a elbirret kooc.”

“Ho, t’nod lles flesruoy trohs.”

There was the sound of a large rainstick being overturned and the kitchen shimmered out of existence to be replaced by the more usual control setup.

“Normality is reasserting itself,” said Alexi, more comprehensibly.

Michael turned away from the former kitchen to look at him, and promptly burst into laughter. “Oh _god,_ no, no it is definitely _not_ reasserting itself.”

Alexi looked down at himself. He was wearing a blue, star-spangled kit and red shorts, and had a World Cup winner’s medal slung around his neck.

“If anything,” Michael wheezed, “we are going _backwards._ This is more improbable than the kitchen.”

“Hey!” Alexi protested. “It’s not that unlikely.”

“I cannot- I cannot even give you odds on this, Alexi. Consider me, ah, yes, I am now truly impressed of the ability of this device. What is this supposed to be, USA ’94? Winners!” Michael doubled over again. “The only thing worse is your beard.”

Alexi stroked his ginger goatee, insulted. “You’re the _worst,_ Ballack. It’s not like Germany really set the world on fire that tournament, so.”

“ _I’m_ the worst?” But before Michael could dissolve into hysteria again, Alexi shifted back into the clothes he had previously been wearing, and his hair returned to its more modern trim. A light fragrance of lavender wafted through the bridge, and they were treated to a field of heather, a chocolate fondue fountain, and a Swiss Alp before the computer screen blinked out _“Probability 1:1”_ and normality was set back in place with a dull _thud._

“Well,” said Michael finally, “that was an experience.”

“I’m still _grievously wounded_ by your uncalled for dismissal of my national team,” said Alexi, but he was struggling to keep a grin off his face.

“Oh, hush, you are not even from Earth.”

“Nation of immigrants, Michael!”

It was all a bit unnecessary, Michael thought as Alexi started flicking through screens on the computer, locating their current position. Life, reality, normality was already improbable enough. The fact that he was currently in slow orbit somewhere in the vicinity of -where? Orion’s Belt, apparently, with _Alexi Lalas_ was proof enough of that. No need for leaping wild distances through the universe and conjuring up small mountains.

Still. It had been fun.

He looked over at Alexi, who really did seem to be in his element, even if he was prodding at things on the computer at what Michael _knew_ was random.

“Hah!” Alexi crowed triumphantly, and the smooth screen above the console unfolded with a gentle whirr, spreading the display across the entire curved face of the bridge. The Heart of Gold was hanging in the tapestry of what Michael couldn’t help but thinking of as the night sky, that being his only point of reference for the blackness studded with stars. But stars didn’t twinkle in space, they just gleamed. Alexi turned to grin at him. “Nice, huh? Beautiful.”

He was standing there backdropped by the far reaches of the galaxy, and Michael remembered all of a sudden the first time they had forayed beyond the suddenly small-seeming confines of the Earth, in the little space hopper with the dome. What had Alexi said? That Michael was bad at emotion? What a stupid thing to say. Michael wasn’t bad at _anything._

He stepped over to the console, and there might have been something in his expression because Alexi changed his stance ever so slightly, his shoulders back in a manner that was slightly surprised.

“Alexi,” Michael said, somewhat breathlessly, and the name felt different in his mouth than it had any hundreds of times he had used it before.

Alexi was looking at him with eyes that were very nearly sparkling. “Yes?”

“I’ve changed my mind. Earlier, when I said you were impossible. I think,” Michael paused to sort the words out in his head. “I think, what I mean is, you are not impossible. Perhaps just very, very improbable.”

Alexi kissed him then, dragging Michael forward by the collar of his shirt to close the final small space between them. It wasn’t particularly graceful, noses bumping against each other and one of Michael’s hands getting squashed against his chest before he could extricate it and better angle Alexi against himself. But nothing they had ever done had ever been particularly graceful, not squabbling over the ESPN desk nor attempting to out-cheat each other at cards nor disagreeing mostly on principle. It had all been a bit ungainly and undignified. But maybe, Michael thought to himself as he walked Alexi backwards into the command chair of the high-end spaceship they had just stolen to sink into his lap and more effectively kiss the living daylights out of him, maybe despite all that, their odds had always been better than expected.

 

 


End file.
